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Photos: Top chocolate tasting spots and tours

In February 2013, Michelin-starred chef Alain Ducasse added a brand-new venture to his Paris repertoire: Le Chocolat Alain Ducasse, the city's first bean-to-bar atelier. Visitors can learn just how it's done, from roasting the beans to refining and conching them into rounded particles of 20 or fewer microns (translation: chocolate so smooth you'll want to die while tasting it). A chocolate statue of a Maya warrior by Timothee Gauguet reminds visitors where the "food of the gods" came from.

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Photos: Top chocolate tasting spots and tours

In February 2013, Michelin-starred chef Alain Ducasse added a brand-new venture to his Paris repertoire: Le Chocolat Alain Ducasse, the city's first bean-to-bar atelier. Visitors can learn just how it's done, from roasting the beans to refining and conching them into rounded particles of 20 or fewer microns (translation: chocolate so smooth you'll want to die while tasting it). A chocolate statue of a Maya warrior by Timothee Gauguet reminds visitors where the "food of the gods" came from. Anne Banas

"Small batch" is what's big at Dandelion Chocolate, a new bean-to-bar factory and cafe in San Francisco's Mission District. Here, the focus is on quality, not quantity: Made in small amounts (with no batch exactly the same), at any given time nearly all the chocolate is on display, and it sells out almost immediately. Ingredients are limited to cocoa beans and sugar (forgoing the usual added cocoa butter, vanilla, and soy lecithin), and the bars focus on origins such as Patanemo (Venezuela) and Ambanja (Madagascar). Anne Banas

Lyon is often referred to as France's gastronomic capital. Strengthening that moniker is the city's own Bernachon, one of the most famous chocolate makers in all of France—and the world. Started in 1953 by Maurice Bernachon, the shop is classically French in style but has a bean-to-bar approach that began well before its time. Now run by Maurice's grandson Philippe, Bernachon is a patisserie in the front and a factory in the back. Anne Banas

With fair-trade, non-GMO certified chocolate and the claim of being the first fully organic bean-to-bar chocolate maker in the U.S., Theo clearly puts high priority on sourcing and sustainability. Free of emulsifiers and additives like high-fructose corn syrup, Theo's classic bars offer nothing but pure chocolate flavor. Anne Banas

The Grenada Chocolate Company will take you to the very cacao groves where the beans come from. Through a strategic alliance with cocoa producer Belmont Estate, travelers to the "Isle of Spice" can go right to the source and see beans being brought in from the field and then fermented in banana leaves and dried by the sun. Those beans—all certified organic and part of a cooperative of about a dozen local farmers—are grown on the estate and used by the factory (about a mile away). It doesn't get much fresher than that. Anne Banas

With its proliferation of artisan purveyors, Brooklyn has become a hotbed for the latest food trends. And at Fine ,amp; Raw Chocolate, sugar and additives are out and authentic chocolate flavor is in. What sets the company apart from other gourmet makers is that its chocolate is processed raw (i.e., by dehydrating beans at a low temperature for at least eight hours). Because the cacao remains virtually in its natural state, antioxidants—as well as chocolate flavors—are preserved, resulting in a bar that not only tastes good but is good for you, too. Anne Banas